000 | Points of Reference

This is a 2 Stage Quest. Complete this Quest to earn:

31 Experience Points (XP)
11.05 Credits (Cr)
1.61 Wonder (??!)

This quest does not begin the story.
It establishes orientation after the fact.
Read it as a legend, not a premise.

000 | Stage 1 | Safety Dance

Five months after 001 was first published

It happened while wrestling with a draft of 058.

What if…?

And that’s why posts on skocko.blog became quests on gameful.me.

Judging him wise, the jury agrees
Highlights unwind, they know what they’ll see
Exhausted remains, meandering path
The rocket’s dilemma, traced to her lap

The twisting white trail, the billows in air
And most damning of all, the fading red glare
All speak for the boy, one lost so young
But pity can wait, the film clip’s begun!

Let’s get to it.

Context: The stanzas (above and in other quests) were written in 1996. Interpret them as you will, but the dilemma was a gift (009).

We (Vincent and Semar on code) built the first version of this gameful learning management system during the 2011/12 school year. I shared our progress on the Adobe Education Exchange, and a small group of wildly adventurous teachers (in classrooms scattered around the world) wanted in.

Then this happened.

Ezio, Forest, and Austin made significant contributions after that Classroom of the Future Foundation video was recorded. Charles, Spencer, and Anthony also chipped in.

Note to Self: Find Paul’s render. That video thumbnail doesn’t do it justice.

Featured Image: (Important: The 1001 CS Tips and Tricks link was a goal. The count was in the low hundreds when game mechanics derailed that project.) A screenshot to mark the end of our 3.5-year migration to /blog (050). A fully gamified site (The Final Post’s featured image) greeted the kids in the fall of 2012 (Julia’s illustration). We moved to Gameful.me in the fall of 2019, and the district tech overlords (generously) gave me plenty of time to say goodbye before they pulled the plug.